


A piece of home

by starfleetbanana



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 10:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4518726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfleetbanana/pseuds/starfleetbanana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy doesn't know how to cope with failure, Jim does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A piece of home

“I hate this ship”.

“Oh, come on, Bones, you don’t” He’d been listening to McCoy complain for hours. He’d had a bad week, and it was probably his fault. They’d lost a crewman on one mission, and Bones could’ve saved him, maybe, but there wasn’t fixing, and so Leonard kept complaining about every single thing he could think of to avoid talking about his feelings.

He knew he was a great doctor, and everyone in medbay was actually capable of doing their job without anyone having to tell them how to be good at it, but this time it had been different, and he couldn’t stop thinking of all the ways he could’ve stopped it before Ensign Daniels died. 

“I want to go back home, I shouldn’t have enlisted in the first place” Probably Jim and Spock were the only ones who could’ve recognised the way his voice broke for a second, but no one on the bridge said a thing.

“You’re being dramatic, Bones” Jim said and he’d tried to smile, but it hurt listening to him saying how much he hated being there, whether that included Jim’s presence in his life or not wasn’t really important. He hated the fact Leonard couldn’t see how amazing he was.

 

* * *

 

 

When his shift finally finished all he wanted was to go to bed. Sleeping wouldn’t make him forget anything, but at least it’d keep him out of the real world for a while. He needed silence and maybe a glass of whiskey, and the darkness of space he hated. 

But the code of his quarters didn’t work. Maybe someone had changed it, and it suddenly seemed like the end of the world. McCoy didn’t like crying at all, and he liked to solve his problems in worse ways than crying, which was the healthiest thing ever according to Christine, but his eyes got watery after the fourth try. He brought his hand to his pursed lips. He wanted to scream.

He decided to walk toward the nearest intercom, and after pressing the button he asked Uhura whether Jim was still on the bridge or not, and if she could  _please_ tell him to see him on their quarters, with a desperate voice. It was unusual hearing Leonard talk about personal matters in the middle of the ship, but he was freaking out.

Jim got to the door of their quarters, and let him in after using the same code they’d been using for a while now. Leonard was exhausted, probably his mind wasn’t working perfectly.

“Sit down. You okay?” Jim asked with a worried expression, sitting right next to him on their bed. 

Bones’ hands were shaking, and Jim took them between his. Leonard always has his brow furrowed  -that was his usual expression, in fact-, but this time it was different. His face conveyed confusion and hurt at the same time. There weren’t a lot of situations where Bones lost it, but he had to recognise he was scared shitless of death.  _He hadn’t been able to save his father, nor his crewman, what would happen if he had to save a personal friend and couldn’t?_

 _“_ Hey, look at me. It’s okay” Jim whispered as he cupped Bones’ face in his hands. Leonard didn’t look at his eyes, he just kept hiding his pain as he always did. He trusted Jim, but he knew there was nothing he could say to fix it. It hadn’t been an alien, it hadn’t been an unknown disease, it had been himself not being good enough. “Bones, Daniels was ill, and you didn’t have enough time, that’s it”. 

He moaned, quivering lips letting out a sound that tasted like something bitter as the tears started streaming down his face. 

Jim gave him a moment and lovingly wrapped his arms around him. Leonard pressed his face into Jim’s uniform as he sobbed, suddenly forgetting all about his professional façade. It felt so good.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Bones” Jim whispered.

 

* * *

 

“You awake?” Jim asked as he put on a white t-shirt. 

Leonard stared at him for a while. His eyes felt heavy, and his head hurt, but he was feeling a bit better. 

“Come on, get up, I’ve got something to show you” He said, patting him on the shoulder. Bones followed him out of their quarters after getting dressed and brushing his teeth. He didn’t bother, crying made his face look weird.

Whenever Leonard wasn’t doing okay Jim used a certain tone of voice he absolutely loved. He was quiet, which wasn’t common in him at all, calm and loving, even more than he usually was, and didn’t ask him to talk about his feelings, something McCoy wasn’t really good at. 

They got in the turbolift. He didn’t register Kirk’s voice, lost in the feeling of his dry mouth. Crying felt just like a hangover, and alcohol worked far better for the same purposes.

“Where are you taking me?” He asked out of curiosity. Jim looked way too excited for it to be a simple walk around the ship, which wasn’t a great idea at all anyway.

“I’m taking you home, Bones” Jim answered. For a moment he panicked, thinking they were actually taking him back to Earth, leaving him there all by himself, and going back to their job because they needed professionals there, and not people who couldn’t keep going when casualties were a thing that happened quite constantly. He missed Georgia, of course, but that didn’t mean the Enterprise had no meaning for him, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t miss his family, and Jim wouldn’t leave him alone, right? 

 _Don’t be a fool,_ he told himself when it actually made sense. 

He closed his eyes, and let the atmosphere surround him. The non stop screaming of the cicadas made his ears hurt a bit, and the warmth of the place was so distinctive and different from the rest of the ship. It was a piece of home.

“Did you do this all by yourself?” He asked, taking in everything around him, from the sky to the grass and the sweet hot smell of a summer night in Georgia. 

“Yeah. Well, actually no, you know I’m not exceptionally good at programming” Leonard smiled and he did the same in the return. Everything felt so right, and even the air around him was perfect. “It’s for you to remember you can carry a piece of home everywhere when you’re in space. It’s kind of hard to remember that when your home is a starship, but I know this is an important thing for you”. He added in a low voice, mantaining the atmosphere as he took Bones’ hand. 

He couldn’t lie and say the pain was no longer there, but it felt lighter now, as if he had the right to forgive himself because he was just another human being and even though he was trying his best, he couldn’t be perfect, not even for Jim, and suddently he was okay with it. 

They sat together on the grass. Of course Jim had wanted the simulation to be a perfect new memory, so he’d got them a few blankets and snacks. It felt like one of those first dates during the academy when, just like in that moment, he had so much to tell, but was so embarassed to show someone he was hurt, unlike Jim, who trusted him and had told him as much as he could about him. 

“The sky looks so weird from here. I’d forgotten how weird it was to be so far from it on Earth” Leonard said, sipping at the bottle of coke. Then he moved closer to Jim, and let his head rest on his shoulder. 

Leonard McCoy wasn’t perfect, and Jim was okay with it. He loved him just the way he was, and he just wanted him to get to love himself a little bit more.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr, prompted by an anon who made me question my ability to make Bones happy. Had a lot of fun writing this, actually.


End file.
